Detention: The Siege at Johnson High

From head to toe - an outstanding piece of cinema. Great actors, fine directing and writing. Got me on the edge right from the beginning. Well done!

I thought this movie was great. It was really suspensful. I thought the actors did a great job dramatizing the situation. I can't imagine what it was like to make such a movie knowing that it really happened. Trying to portray the students emotions and actions must have been really challenging. Again, I thought the movie was really good.

I just saw this movie on court tv, and I flicked in on it about twenty minutes into the movie. Every two minutes it seemed I was crying and i think I will be depressed for the rest of my life. But it was a good movie. It was really really good... and sooooo sad.

I'm not one for the movie-of-the-week genre, but this film was surprisingly good, and it's not only for the reason that Freddie Prinze Jr. is one of my favorie actors.

Shortly before Christmas, Jason Copeland (Rick Schroeder) decides to take out his pent-up revenge on Johnson High School, which he failed out of a year earlier. He enters the school heavily armed and begins firing shots, with no intention to kill anyone, and takes 80 students hostage in the music room. One of them Aaron Sullivan, is a troubled student, much like Jason, who soon becomes the middleman to Jason and makeshift hostage negotiator/small town cop/unlikely hero Skip Fine (Henry Winkler, in one of his many great performances). Aaron must speak to Skip on the phone, explain Jason's demands, and keep his classmates alive. He'll be a hero if he can accomplish these tasks, but can Skip help him to break through to Jason?

The performances in this film are exceptional for a TV-movie. At times, I found myself huddling up, especially the part when Jason puts the gun to a crying Samantha's (Katie Wright) head. He forces lookouts into the hallway, and insists that a cop entering the school or a student fleeing will result in bloodshed. I was so scared every time a student fled going to the bathroom. I was particularly freaked out when Darren, the sole African-American student, was killed being selfless by protecting a classmate. My heart skipped a beat as his determined, hysterical mother tried to find out of Darren was alive. We also saw glimpses of Aaron's scared mother, hoping that her son stays one step ahead of Jason to keep himself and his classmates alive. Freddie Prinze Jr. puts on an incredible performance, and looked so young (he still does). He was only about 20 years old then (my age), and I'm glad a better hairstyle was forthcoming for him. Henry Winkler is a great actor, and he's just the kind of unlikely hero you'd expect. In my opinion, casting on his part was a great decision.

If you like true-life dramas (this was based on reality), and like to see an unlikely individual prevail, then this is a great movie for you. It's well-written and smart, and you'll be left cheering for Prinze and Winkler. Rick Schroeder also puts on a great performance, and can scare and shake up the most unnerved person (myself included). If you can find this movie at your video store, definitely pick it up.

It's entertaining, nothing to write home about.

The acting isn't that great, but certainly not awful and it does show how deranged minds think. Dude walks into a school, commits a heinous act and then starts buddying up with his potential victims like he is some hero. It's pretty natural, most people in a crisis do something they regret later and often will do anything to convince themselves of not being "the bad guy".

Realistically, I don't remember any shooting ever happening like this, it's usually less dramatic and more delusional like the first part of the movie. It would have ended pretty much during or right after people got shot.

I don't know why they made it resemble something like some terrorist, escaped convict or bank robber trying to escape from the police, when Active Shooters usually don't last more than 5 to 10 minutes. Which is hard to make a movie about unless you really go into the psyche or the shooter. There has been only 1 shooting like this (that I know of) in Canada, where Denis Lortie walked into Parliament and shoot a ton of Politicians and René Jalbert talked him down, it's quite amazing and a great show of courage and a clear indication that mental illness is hard to screen for.

In Short: This is less a mass shooter movie than it is a hostage situation movie, it's entertaining and shows how people can have distorted thinking and without help can end ups doing real harm to themselves and others.

The music used is pretty good and adds to the scenes.